Extraterrestrial Angels. Rick Owens AW22

March 5, 2022March 5, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

The fog machines at Rick Owens were pumping the scent of his new collaboration with Aesop into his show space at the Palais de Tokyo. Models also carried thuribles, modern mechanized versions of the censers that priests use to dispense incense in church. Owens was a Catholic school boy. In a pre-show interview, he talked about his upbringing: “thinking and talking about morality in school all day and studying Cecil B. DeMille’s 1930s Art Deco black-and-white interpretation of the bible,” by night. “That’s what formed me,” he said with a laugh. “I’m so transparent.” For autumn-winter 2022, Owens was after something a bit more solemn following his January men’s show, whose lamp helmets and zip-all-the-way-to-the-hairline hoods look aggressive a month-and-a-half later amidst the onset of war. He quoted from his press release: “During times of heartbreak, beauty can be one of the ways to maintain faith.” This was a beauty of a Rick Owens collection, starting with a full complement of evening dresses, including a few Oscars red carpet contenders in “dusty sequins,” draped with evocative asymmetry from the shoulders and featuring collapsing volumes at the back or around the hips. Cropped and shrunken jackets and lean and languid bias-cut skirts caught a bit of the Old Hollywood glamour, but these weren’t in Cecil B. DeMille’s black-and-white. Owens combined peach and apricot, and a whole spectrum of oranges. The yellow and aqua blue pairings inevitably conjured visions of the Ukrainian flag. In a season of strong outerwear, few pieces can rival Owens’s for audacity. There were puffer jackets whose sleeves extended to the ground, duvet jackets that curled around the torso like nautilus shells, and “Theda Bara” parkas with goat fur trim that look like commercial hits in the making. “I’ve been hearing people being apologetic for presenting fashion right now,” Owens said. “We’re an industry that has to support a lot of people, there’s no reason to make an excuse for that. We are people who express the best that aesthetics has to offer. And that’s of great social and cultural value.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Rewilding. Chloé AW22

March 5, 2022March 5, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Sustainability is also priority for Gabriela Hearst, whether it’s her New York-based brand or Chloé – the Parisian house. “We think about the climate crisis, we’re able to see the climate crisis,” Hearst declared. “But now it’s time to start visualizing climate success. And there are many ways of doing it. Rewilding is one of them.” More than any other high-fashion designer, except for Stella McCartney, Hearst invites discussion, inspection, even, of how she sources her materials. Which meant that a fundamental divergence between the positions of these two climate-activist fashion designers opened up at the beginning of the show. Here for autumn-winter 2022 there was leather. A lot of it. Not “vegan leather” or any of its fruit or mushroom substitutes, or its fossil fuel-derived polyester lookalikes, but actual glossy leather-leather. Made from the hides of cattle. “For me, leather is a by-product of the meat industry,” Hearst said in a preview. “So, as long as you know where it’s coming from, and you have traceability and it’s done in a proper way, you’re using waste.” Her leather comes from Italian suppliers, whose tanning processes are compliant with European environmental standards. Over to how the overture to the collection looked: strict, minimal, black, brown and yellowy-tan leather pieces, ranging from coats to shirts to narrow jeans – with an of-the-moment white tank tee – and a belted black dress with balloon sleeves. The show hewed between boy-tailored pant suits, fit-and-flare dresses, and Hearst’s characteristic affinity for ponchos and knitwear—and for searching out links with socially-responsible textile projects. The latest is her commissioning of the African-American Gee’s Bend women quilters of Alabama. The storied artist community used Chloé deadstock scraps to fashion blankets and the gilet layered over a coat worn as the finale by Amber Valletta. On the runway, Hearst wanted to materialize the hope that damage can be reversed. She did it with recycled cashmere knitted sweaters and skirts. On the front were instarsia images of melted glaciers, arid and burning landscapes. On the reverse: pictures of green mountain ranges, forests and polar bears. The only thing that misses the mark is the lack of lightness. Chloé is a French brand that is all about the flou – and Hearst, it seems, just doesn’t want go that direction. Beneath all the leathers, heavy blankets and chunky trekking boots, you wish you could see more of the feminine aspect of the label. Maybe it’s worth investigating that field next season?

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Toned-Down. Ludovic De Saint Sernin AW22

March 4, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

For autumn-winter 2022, Ludovic De Saint Sernin took a slightly different path than usual. The new season pressed current Y2K generational fashion buttons, but also signaled de Saint Sernin’s design ability to think through what might come after that. A part of the thrill for him is belonging to the all-about-me self-invention of social media. So he walked in his own show – in a brown crepe open-necked shirt and matching flares, flanked by a couple of lanky lookalikes. “Welcome to my life,” he declared beforehand. “This is what I do. It’s about owning up to being who you are, your own muse.” He loved the fact that Gigi Hadid appeared in a big shirt and white boots, channeling “the Malibu girl going out in her boyfriend’s shirt. Like all the celebs I grew up with who were being chased by tabloid paparazzi in the 2000s – like Paris and Britney. “ Bella, as the finale, wore an almost sheer black chiffon halterneck dress “a bit like a nightdress. For when you have to go on the red carpet at the end of the day, but would really rather be in bed.” De Saint Sernin is known for his overtly sexy, libertine, gender-blurring crystal mesh bras and halters – and his signature cross-laced fly jeans. All of that was there, now logo’d with a LDSS sparkly print. He extended that further into body-con dressing for boys: a black leather miniskirt; a crossover jersey crop-top. But the big surprise in his collection was a whole other thing: minimal elegance in shades of brown and taupe (which instantly reminded me of a Jacquemus collection from a couple of seasons ago). Overcoats, a long bustier column dress, a brown shirt and skirt: luxurious oversized sweaters. It stood apart, in a preternaturally accomplished way. “I wanted to push the idea of daywear,” Ludovic concluded. “Because everyone’s doing mini-mini, as I have. But I thought it would be cool to go elegant and long.” It made for an glimpse of where de Saint Sernin, and his whole generation might be headed with their fashion desires.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Très Cool. Coperni AW22

March 4, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Coperni ate it up this season! This is definitely my favourite collection coming from Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer‘s Parisian label so far. The hoodie-lapelled blazers, overcoats and fleeces that you see Coperni’s It-model cast wearing so coolly here represented a challenging design brief for Vaillant and Meyer’s tailoring atelier to achieve: they had to look good worn both up and down. As Vaillant showed on his phone pre-show, the women of that atelier – named Cap Est Sarl – sent the designers pictures of themselves wearing the prototypes as that development progressed towards runway-readiness in the last few weeks. “They are so cute, always trying the pieces before sending them – I love them,” said Meyer. Added Vaillant: “They are in Ukraine, in Kyiv: we hadn’t heard from them for a few days. They are safe for now. And we dedicate this collection to them.”

This show placed this collection within the pressure cooker arena in which the insecure adolescent chrysalis is forged into the self-aware young adult butterfly: high school. On a runway framed by school lockers and to an excellent faux-radio broadcast of upbeat disaffection the models first emerged as laconically withdrawn, cloistered in those hooded pieces of generically reinvented tailoring. These did indeed work with the hood/lapel worn back off the head. Other cleverly twisted takes on tailoring were the disassembled jacket crop tops and miniskirts and a twist-fronted Le Smoking jacket with cut outs at the midriff whose construction translated finely into menswear fleeces and trench coats. A waistcoat, sometimes cut in a crystal pinstripe, also incorporated a hood that came with cute little Batman ears. Aran knit short-sleeved bodies featuring that hood and a circular cutout at the back were eccentric takes on a preppy knitwear mafia staple. Jeans and leather pants that were worn as gaiters cut to just above the knee were a funny riff on low-waistband rebellion. Upcycled Adidas Gazelles and zip-decorated pumps aside, notable footwear included chisel toed articulated soled derbies whose vectored shape was inspired by the Tesla Cybertruck prototype. Coperni’s emblematic Swipe bag appeared in blown glass: calamity was avoided when the model carrying it caught her heel on the runway and pitched forward before pulling off a graceful recovery. We shifted towards the big butterfly-emerges moment – prom night, of course – via a grungily pretty asymmetric dress in white French velvet worn with those Adidas, and a super clever minidress made entirely of upcycled ties. Prom queen candidate gowns substituted tulle for rose strewn latex and a dancefloor’s worth of who’s-sorry-now sheer minidresses. This was an extremely witty collection that was very cleverly conceived by the designers – and wonderfully cut by those Kyiv craftswomen.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Jackie And Carolyn. The Row Resort 2023

March 4, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

After two years off the runway, Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen brought their resort 2023 collection for The Row to Paris. They weren’t doing interviews and the brand didn’t release a statement, but when American designers have swapped New York for Paris in the past they’ve typically talked about the city’s more international audience and elevated playing field. The Olsens need little help with their profiles, so let’s assume they thought they had something new to say about their fashion. As it turned out, they did, and it speaks volumes. The line-up finds them in a more playful frame of mind than we’ve come to associate with The Row. The elegance and sophistication remain, but they also dabbled in hyperbole, in the form of extra-long sleeves and neck grazing, exaggerated 1970s collars, and explored surprising retro flourishes like pillbox hats, muffs, and top handle bags in the crooks of arms. If Jackie Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy joined wardrobes, this The Row collection would be it. Some looks, including an evening dress made with a chartreuse-colored wool blanket wrapped and draped from the torso, reminded you of the Japanese designers who made their own transitions to Paris in the 1980s. Is the Olsens’ minimalist phase over? Not exactly. Most of these looks were head-to-toe monochrome or black-and-white, and there were no prints or much in the way of other distractions. The silhouette was still rooted in tailoring and the shoes were low-heeled and grounding. The difference was this collection’s looseness. Not in terms of volumes, but in terms of the fun it was willing to have. See the fine cashmere sweaters that twisted in back to reveal the white poplin shirts below them, the jabots as oversize as the pointy collars they accessorized, the back-to-front coats, and those long sleeves. Graceful fashion that makes you smile feels like the right instinct for the current moment.